“Stop targeting us, release our prisoners, and leave our land, we will stop attacking you. The people of US allied countries have to put pressure on their governments to immediately end their alliance with the US in the war against terror (Islam). If you persist we will also continue. We want to tell you that the Death Smoke squad will reach you soon, and then you will see your dead in their thousands–God willing. This is a warning.”

Al Qaida statement

“If you don’t stop your injustices, more blood will flow and these attacks are very little compared with what may happen with what you call terrorism.”

Abu Dujan al Afgani, Military Spokesman for al Qaida in Europe

Where might is master, justice is servant. German Proverb

You’re not “safer” when you’re dead.

This inescapable bit of reasoning seems to elude the characters in the Bush White House.

President Bush assured us that we would be safer if we toppled Saddam and removed the “Iraqi threat.”

He ignored the many warnings of people from every corner of the world that his illicit war would only stir up the Middle East “hornets nest” and generate legions of terrorists.

Now we are seeing the tragic results of that action.

The horrific bombings in Madrid prove beyond a doubt that those who supported the illegal invasion of Iraq are now in greater danger than ever.

Did we somehow imagine there would be no retaliation for the killing of 10,000 innocent Iraqis and the subsequent stealing of their major resource?

The al Qaida communique clearly states that Spain was attacked because of its support for the war in Iraq.

That much is irrefutable.

200 innocent Spaniards were murdered because of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar elected to disregard the will of 85% of his people and join the Bush Crusade into Iraq.

This is his harvest.

Can we deny the cause and effect relationship between the act of aggression in Iraq and the resulting carnage in Madrid? The two are inseparably linked.

This is the tragic symmetry of terrorism; when we perpetrate injustice, we invite disaster.

Prime Minister Aznar said, “We will not give in to terrorism. We will find those who are responsible and bring them to justice.”

This is understandable.

In the final analysis it is only autocrats like Aznar who are served by terrorism. It provides them with the excuse they need to curtail civil liberties, solidify their personal power and wage endless war.

Terrorism produces widespread fear, and that fear is the only thing that vindicates the tenure of men like Aznar, and Bush. Fear is the duct tape that holds their feeble coalition together.

Just ask Sharon. Without fear, their mandate evaporates.

An editor from the conservative magazine, The National Review, was commenting on the radio, “No grievance justifies the killing of innocent people.”

Of course, he is right. And, we can accept that judgment without qualification. But what about the 10,000 innocent people who were killed in Iraq?

What yardstick are we using to measure that crime?

Where is the justification for that act of wholesale slaughter?

Where are the phantom WMDs?

Colin Powell, remarking on the absence of WMDs the other day said, “If there were “Intelligence” failings we need to investigate them.”

That is the brutish rhetoric of the conqueror.

Investigate them?

What he forgot to add is that we need to determine who is responsible and charge them to the full extent of the law.

What he forgot to say is that murder of people in countries that are of commercial interest to the US is of no real consequence.

What he forgot to say is that the current occupants of the White House should be dragged out of the Oval Office and escorted in leg-irons to a dock at The Hague.

It was murder that generated the bombings in Madrid; the murders in Iraq.